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[Union demand proposal] Should software development (and all other IP-producing labour) get paid residuals? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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My gut answer is "yes!!!" or "revolution" but I want to hear what y'all think. For those unware, some creative professions such as film writers get paid a small portion of all revenue generated by their work after it's been produced, which is called a "residual," and it's part of their current fight with hollywood not properly paying those residuals due to the streaming loophole.

Since most programs that are profitable are based on the work of long gone developers (basically capital that gets worked on by machine labour), I think this might be a great demand for an eventual software development union.

What do y'all think?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That would be another way to go about it, but I can't see how we could either force the corporations to open their source, or use that to better compensate workers. I probably could've gone through it more in-depth in the post, but I thought of this idea specifically to help out contractor-type workers who usually don't have basic guaranteed rights like paid time off, but who would not want to lose some of the benefits of contractor-type work by joining the union.

I see now from all the comments how it can have a lot of counter-productive side effects, and I definitely think that FOSS should always be at the heart of every software union (and also internal training, for that matter), but I can't think of a way to use it to solve this specific problem (which I forgot to include in the original post lol).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Ive been thinking a bit about it, but there's no obvious solution. We're reasonably well treated by the capital.

Anything we ask is likely to lower our financial returns in the short term, in my opinion, since free-software can't tap into "free-market" money as easily, for it's intrinsic scaling/copyleft characteristics.

Specifically, we could ask that union members have to dedicate (say) 5% of their hours to free software initiatives. We'd not be releasing proprietary code, but it would be contributing to the ecosystem.

Still, I think something we miss as software developers is the willingness to find our own customers, to use FOSS to compete seriously with middleman giants, like uber and booking.

I'm finding activity pub and lemmy a really interesting case for free, decentralised competition, and a possible solution to scam, by giving providers a chance to build their reputation. There's also opencollective.com's business model, where anyone making money with their platform has to pay them.

How that ties back down with unions, I'm not sure, but I feel those discussions could move forward hand in hand.